


Change OR the one where L and Light get married

by avoidfilledwithcelluloid



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Also in this fic, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blow Jobs, Gift Fic, L has an artistic outlet, Light has his memories, M/M, There is more than one trans in this fic!!!! :0, Trans Characters, Wedding Night, Weddings, a Nine Inch Nails sweatshirt, a night terror, and two red corsages, maltesers, old nude sketches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidfilledwithcelluloid/pseuds/avoidfilledwithcelluloid
Summary: L wasn’t a good driver; he could admit that, to himself. Since he and Quillsh were the only ones who knew the route to the old Wammy summer home, L wasn’t surprised to be behind the wheel. (Thankful, maybe, that he had the forethought to secure this little automatic Volkswagen rather than flounder on the stick shift Quillsh always tried to teach him.) He dared to be happy about his driver role, even; it was appropriate that he chauffeured Light to where they’d be married in a day’s time. Something romantic about crossing the threshold, carrying his love into his world – L stuck out his tongue. Long drives made him corny.(At Quillsh Wammy's summer mansion, L and Light prepare to get married in front of the Yagami family, Watari, and the ghosts of their past. A gift fic for 8484848484 or @ohgodplsdontlook on tumblr, to go with some lawlight wedding fanart.)
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Comments: 41
Kudos: 129





	Change OR the one where L and Light get married

**Author's Note:**

  * For [8484848484](https://archiveofourown.org/users/8484848484/gifts).



> Okay so. this fic took me ... two months to finish? it was a real bear. but i wanted it to be perfect, you know? Like, if i'm going to write a story about this ship that i've written *checks my notes* over 100 fics for, then the one where they get married should be REALLY good. So i really hope you all enjoy the wedding fic I ended up writing, especially @ohgodplsdontlook, since the fic was written for you. I put a lot of my own small headcanons into it that have just rolled around for ages. I put a lotta love into this fic. anyway! enjoy!

L wasn’t a good driver; he could admit that, to himself. Since he and Quillsh were the only ones who knew the route to the old Wammy summer home, L wasn’t surprised to be behind the wheel. (Thankful, maybe, that he had the forethought to secure this little automatic Volkswagen rather than flounder on the stick shift Quillsh always tried to teach him.) He dared to be happy about his driver role, even; it was appropriate that he chauffeured Light to where they’d be married in a day’s time. Something romantic about crossing the threshold, carrying his love into his world – L stuck out his tongue. Long drives made him corny.

Drumming his fingers on the wheel, he slid his gaze from the road to the passenger seat where Light curled forward and sniffed in his sleep. A deep sigh dropped through L’s chest. He told Light the bare details of the mansion, unable to describe all his history there. Were the halls still haunted by his own angry, adolescent rot – the stench of seeing so much violence at a young age burned into the wallpaper? L swallowed hard; what would a seventeen year old L think of a future where he married a man who, at that age, killed more people than anyone in the world?

Soft brown hair curtained over the features of Light’s face, leaving only his lips and nose peeking out. If only he weren’t driving: the distance between his lips and Light wouldn’t be hard to cross at all. Yes, another corny thought – to kiss Light while he drove – but a good thought too.

“Ryuzaki.” Soichiro tapped his shoulder. “You should watch the road.”

“Oh. Yes.” L gripped the steering wheel with both hands. He shifted to look in the rear view mirror at his former employee’s stern eyes. “Of course. The road.”

Soichiro and Sayu had both wanted to ride with Light, who would only ride with L. He assumed the car with Sachiko and Quillsh was more pleasant, probably filled with talk of recipes and mystery novels. His own two ancillary Yagamis started to vibrate with unrestrained fraternization after Light fell asleep two hours into the drive. L cracked his neck and sucked his teeth; their need for small talk made all his muscles both tight and tired.

“Are we almost to the house?” Sayu pressed her face to the window and it gave her voice a nasal quality. “Boy, there’s a lot of fields here. You ever been to a farm, Ryuzaki?”

L shook his head. Even when he bunked in the Wammy House attic, there weren’t too many reasons to explore the farmland around the place. He was very indoors – a trait he and Light shared. Sayu invited them on a camping trip once, and his heart had grown two sizes hearing Light on the phone turning her down.

“We don’t do that sort of thing,” was what Light said. What a powerful little thing - to be one half of a we.

“Oh well,” Sayu said. “You should go to a farm if you’ve got time. You can get fresh cheese, eggs, that sort of stuff.”

“Mm.” L squeezed the wheel. “I don’t eat eggs.”

“What? Like, not even omelets?” Disbelief struck through Sayu’s tone. “Not even poached or anything?”

“No.” A shiver ran down L’s spine at the thought of cold, slimy poached eggs. “I don’t like eggs, except when used as ingredients for cakes or whatever.”

“But the cheese! You could still get fresh cheese at the farm. Or cream even.”

“Light is lactose intolerant.”

“What?” Soichiro’s knees bumped the back of L’s seat as he clapped a hand on the headrest. “He is? When did this happen?”

A wave of uncertainty washed over L. He peeked at Light, who sneezed in his sleep, and L took the sneeze as permission.

“On a trip to France, Light had a few issues with his stomach and Watari offered to send us to his dietician,” L said. “We had a few appointments, tested things out, and found that he didn’t have the enzymes to process dairy, which was why much of our French cuisine made him ill. Butter and cream are, unfortunately, not Light’s friends.”

“Oh.” Soichiro settled back in his seat; when L glanced in the rearview, guilt lined the wrinkles around his eyes. “I didn’t know that. Did you ever, uh, Sayu, did you ever notice your brother’s problems with dairy?”

“I dunno.” Sayu shrugged. The tip of her nose was a little flat from the window and her ponytail spilled over the seat back as she reclined. “How am I supposed to keep track of when Light poops because of dairy or when he poops because of normal reasons?”

“Sayu,” Soichiro grew red under his mustache. “Please. Your brother wouldn’t appreciate you talking about him pooping.”

“Please don’t worry about it,” L said. “We do not have any dairy in the wedding meal. Light will be fine.”

A long quiet signaled that Soichiro’s concern was not, in fact, whether or not his son would consume lactose during his wedding. L inhaled and put the man’s sulking out of his mind. He turned off the flat road onto a steep gradient, driving upward toward the twisting mountain path. L pictured the map Quillsh showed him of how to get to his old summer mansion and was reminded of coming here as a child – peering out the window to see the trees below get smaller and smaller as Quillsh played books-on-tape to pass the time. Novels the old man thought L needed to know – _A Separate Peace_ , _Brideshead Revisited_ , _Rebecca_. Only now that he spun the steering wheel himself, a heavy quiet blanketing the car, did L think of how those books were about returning to something old as a new person: butterflies returning to their broken-open chrysalis and seeing all the growth and destruction of change.

“ _Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again_ ,” L thought as he pushed himself, his love, and the others on to his own Manderley, of sorts. After checking to make sure no cars were in front or behind them, L grabbed Light by the shoulder and shook.

“Wake up,” he said. “I’m bored.”

“No.” Light shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. “That won’t work, big head. I’m still sleeping.”

“You’re not. Get up, little brat.”

Light shot L a poisonous glare. With an uncharacteristic sloppiness, he righted himself in his seat and shook out his arms. In the back seat, Sayu gasped – perhaps at the unkind nickname her brother wore. L didn’t have room to pretend a spade wasn’t a spade, especially when he suspected Light of eavesdropping. The lack of sleep-mist in his frustrated gaze told L all he needed to know, though he should’ve been aware from the start. Light never napped.

L watched him in one-second intervals until Light’s movements were stop-motion, fractured and fussy. He peered out the passenger side window at the rock wall, shoulders sun-warm pink. After a few moments, Light stuck his finger against L’s chin and pointed him forward.

“Road,” Light said. “Look at the road.”

“I can watch you and watch the road.” L sniffed. “Do you have so little confidence in my driving?”

“Did Ryuzaki really call you a brat?” Sayu piped up. “Does he do that a lot?”

“Light is a brat a lot,” L said.

“Ryuzaki calls all the kettles black.” Light rolled his eyes and sucked on his teeth. “Are we to the house yet?”

“No. Twenty minutes, I think.” L stared out over the mountain curve; trees shrank as they wound around tall rocky walls. To his side, Light cracked his elbows and pursed his lips. Every stretch set off another popping noise as he realigned himself.

“Light,” Soichiro said. “Have you always been lactose intolerant?”

A firm punch to his shoulder from Light made L lose his steering-wheel grip. He caught himself with only the slightest swerve. Unable to punch back, L cobbled together an expression he hoped read as _you snooze, you lose._ Light pinched L on his forearm, which signaled a successful communication.

“Yeah, Dad.” Light said. “Sorry I didn’t tell you. Honestly, I just didn’t think it was important for you to know.”

“It was important enough for Ryuzaki to know.” Under his gruff voice, Soichiro couldn’t hide a faint whininess.

“He was there when I found out.” Light spoke and moved in a composed away, turning just around to smile at his father. He let his tone dip into a saccharine sort of innocence, the kind L complained about when used on waiters who asked if Light wanted to see the secret menu. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t he know?”

“I think the implication is that you told me personal information before you told your family,” L added. “Which is unusual, I guess. I wouldn’t know.”

“Hey.” Sayu jerked between the front seats, her elbow resting on the middle console. “Did you know Ryuzaki hates eggs?”

The question was quick and caught Light off guard. A dense sarcasm clouded his answer.

“I’m getting married to him tomorrow, Sayu,” he said. “Of course I know he hates eggs.”

“Geez.” Her enthusiasm dampened and Sayu retreated into the backseat. “Sorry.”

Opening his mouth, Light caught L staring at him again and thought better of his response. Instead, he slid a big hand over L’s knee and squeezed.

As they ascended into vibrant green and red foliage, the small car cooled throughout. Sun had warmed it on the drive from the landing strip, but now even L’s white shirt and jeans weren’t keeping out the chill. Beside him, Light rubbed his arms as gooseflesh rose over his biceps. The gold, barely visible hairs standing on end brought to L’s mind, unfortunately, other times he’d seen Light get goosebumps – a surprise kiss to the ticklish spot on his neck; a brush against where his waist had just enough give to pinch; a mouth on his asshole. Warmth returned to L’s jeans in one specific place. Hm. That wasn’t going to do any favors to his driving.

“Oh wow.” Sayu marveled through a shiver. L didn’t need to take his eyes from the front window to know what she was marveling at. He pulled into the stone drive-way of the summer house, which rose taller as the car came closer. Her awe didn’t permeate his own memories of the mansion, its hallways cold and garden colder. What small things cheered him was the slow stretch of Light’s legs, unfurling from their previous envelope-fold in the foot-well. Those legs walking around on the carpets a teenage L slouched across through his summers – a single thought that soured all L’s musings.

L parked alongside Quillsh’s maroon hatchback and patted Light’s thigh. He squeezed and felt the goosebumps on his palm.

“We’re here,” he said.

“Finally.” Sayu popped open her door before anyone else. “Geez, my legs are cramped from sitting so long. Hey, Ryuzaki, can you open up the trunk? I want to get in so I can pick a good room.”

“Wait.” Soichiro stumbled out after his daughter, leaving L and Light alone in the car. “Sayu, you should get a sweatshirt or something before you go. Are you listening to me?”

Amid the muffled chatter of his family outside, Light inhaled with a quiet gasp. His eyes darted to meet L’s and glowed as though illuminated from the inside.

“Are you ready?” His question was one rock, several birds; that was how Light posed all his questions. He asked one thing that was a question about a thousand things – but those things were up to the person he spoke to. _Are you ready to get inside? Are you ready to let me into where your childhood was? Are you ready to fuck me on a twin bed? Are you ready to marry me?_

“Yes,” L nodded. “Are you?”

“No,” Light spoke in a defrosting tone, the coolness projected in front of his family thawing away. “Remind me again why we’re doing this? Having a wedding at all?”

In one motion L pulled Light to his chest and kissed him square on his twitching lips. They fit with his own; they tasted like spit and salt; and L never wanted to stop kissing Light, or holding him. Two hands touched L’s cheeks, long fingers tangling in his hair to draw him near.

“I wanted to kiss you that whole drive,” L gasped between their mouths.

Languid kissing pushed and pulled L from his mind. He rocked himself closer and Light welcomed him, elbows and mouth parting so L laid against him. The shift gear drove into L’s stomach, though pain didn’t register among a flowering, flowing bliss all pouring from where Light’s clever tongue coaxed his into a deeper kiss. L let his hands be daring, dance at the edge of Light’s tank top and push underneath so he clasped his bare waist. A moan echoed through the cavern of his mouth, and Light let out another one as L drew him across the divide. With the steering wheel, he couldn’t fit more than half of himself in L’s lap, but Light twisted his legs with each renewed kiss. L glowed when he saw Light rubbing his calves and ankles together – a childish fidget his love got when overcome by his own sense of romance. 

They pulled apart with breath mingling in a hot, fuzzy mix. Light had dew in his eyes – their usual brown gone glossy gold with longing shining through. L dropped his hands on to cold thighs that shivered under his touch.

“We need to go in,” Light whispered.

“I don’t want to.” L didn’t like how small his voice became. “I hate this house.”

Once the words came out, he tasted their truth. When Quillsh suggested the mansion as a wedding spot, something curdled in L’s stomach.

“Why?” Light’s mouth was dark-cherry stained, and he kissed L’s cheek with his near maroon lips. “It’s just a house.”

“It’s haunted.” L bit back a groan as Light twined his hand into L’s hair, tugging it. “I’ve always felt ghosts here. Too many ghosts.”

“Ghosts aren’t real.” Light breathed, his little gasps dropping wet and hot over L’s neck. “But don’t worry. They won’t hurt you.”

“Hm? Why not?”

“Because they’ll know you’re mine.” Opening his lips, Light dropped them right between the shoulder and throat. He sucked and it was a wonderful pressure. L understood why Light demanded attention so often – being the sole focus of Light’s body was delicious.

Five minutes later, L and Light made their way up to the mansion. On L’s neck, a bright red mark shone. In both arms he held their suitcases, having made the argument to Light that it was proper for him to carry his fiancé’s luggage. Light insisted he could carry his own.

“No, no,” L said. “I’m providing. See? You’re so lucky to marry a good provider.”

“You’re being stupid,” Light said, pushing open the entrance door with his hip. “You’re going to drop those and my underwear will be all over the floor.”

“Not yours,” L said. “I’d make sure to drop mine. That’s what a good fiancé does.”

They came in to find the Yagami family and Quillsh at the base of a wide staircase. A single member of the house’s staff swung around them and plucked suitcases up, ferrying them up the stairs. Sachiko noticed Light first and clapped her hands, exclaiming that they’d been waiting to see the boys before going to their rooms. By contrast, Soichiro stared hard at L’s neck and said nothing.

“I’m sure everyone is quite tired by the trip,” Quillsh said. “Why don’t we retire to our rooms while the staff prepare dinner? Now, Miss Yagami, I think I can show you a room you’ll quite like, lovely view of the garden.”

He spread his arms and ushered the three family members up the stairs. With the same overplayed secretiveness as a butler in a boilerplate mystery, Quillsh gave L a wink over his shoulder. Suppressing an eye roll, L yelped as Light grabbed him by the bicep.

“I want to see your room,” he said. “Your old room, if it’s still in here.”

“Oh,” L said. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Light nodded. “Let me enjoy seeing your childhood room. After all, you’ve seen mine.”

“Yes, but,” L started up the staircase with Light still attached to his arm, “I suspected you were a murderer. You’re just being nosy.”

“The pot calls the kettle black, once again.” Light tugged L in for a single chaste kiss. “And I’m not being nosy. Investigative, more like.”

L led Light through a narrow hallway until he found a door plastered with faded notebook paper. In a teenage L’s scrawl was a warning to keep out at all costs. Light peeled the note off by its yellowed cello-tape and brushed his fingers over it, smiling with amusement. L pushed the door open with his shoulder; he pretended, for Light’s sake, not to see him fold the notebook paper into a small square and slip it in his pocket.

Piling their bags in one of the few empty corners, L ushered Light into the room. They both looked around, wide-eyed.

“I haven’t been in here for a long time,” L said. “I haven’t been the person this room belongs to for, hm, an even longer time.”

“I suppose this is where the ghosts are.” Light trailed his finger across the dust collecting on an old twin bed frame. “The past coming back to haunt you and all that.”

“If those ghosts are anything like your father,” L said, “then the hickey will scare them off.”

“Don’t say that.” Light flicked an uncomfortable glance over his shoulder at L. “Don’t say that about my dad. He’s not scared of you.”

“He is scared of me.” L shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets. “He’s scared that you might actually love me.”

“Shut up.” Light’s tone shut down whatever remark L had next on his tongue. His voice was a bruise with a thumb jammed into it – all upset soreness just painful enough to be boring. “Just. Leave it alone, okay?”

L left it alone. He leaned against the wall, faded posters for Placebo and the Pixies crinkling under his back. Light walked the perimeter with his hands out to touch. His fingers brushed over a desk littered with manila files, more worn notebook paper, a few CD-ROMs and floppy discs. He picked up small X-Men figurines and wiggled them before asking their names – Rogue, L listed dutifully, Iceman, Nightcrawler, and Emma Frost.

Light came, finally, to L’s bookcase and touched the leather bindings of L’s sketchbooks. Inching out one, he sat cross-legged on the floor and let it spill open. L settled beside him in a crouch.

“These are yours?” Light skimmed a finger over drawings of coffee mugs, various fruits.

“Quillsh encouraged me to have a creative outlet,” L rocked himself onto his ass and split his legs so one flanked Light on either side. “Poetry didn’t take, but art classes did.” He wrapped his arms around Light’s waist, hooking his chin onto a bare shoulder.

Light leaned into L’s chest and turned another page. “You have a talent for it,” he said. His thumb brushed a sketched self-portrait. “I’d have liked to meet him. Young you, I mean.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.” L flicked his gaze from thumb to the sullen portrait staring at them. Was it too dramatic to say he didn’t recognize the picture? For one, to it wouldn’t be entirely true. He knew the frown from glaring into the mirror at seventeen, upset about the world, about not winning Parcheesi with Quillsh, about everything; he knew the unkempt hair that didn’t have Light steady with a brush to tame it; and he knew the lost distance in his teenage drawing’s eyes. The L who drew himself then didn’t know his future – how it would be chaos and joy, danger and happiness, fear and, borne from that fear, love.

“You’re wrong.” With one hand, Light smoothed over L’s arm. His tone was soft but wavering. “I think about what it would have been like, if we’d both met as teenagers. Would we be awful to each other again? Would we fall in love?” Light flicked another page past to one full of people – a study of Quillsh, some former staff members, a woman L had seen at a club he’d snuck out to. “Would we make the same decisions, fall into the same patterns?”

He shuffled his shoulders enough to slouch down on L’s chest. When Light breathed, it was a rabbit heart against L’s skin – quick and precious and afraid.

“You’ve known almost everything about me since I was seventeen. I didn’t get to know seventeen year old L. What was he like?”

“Stupid.” L blinked and saw a ghostly figure hovering by his desk. How could he mistake it for anyone else? His own black, crow feather hair, his own wide eyes given over to blood-deep distrust. That ghost, he knew, could never imagine how tender L’s heart would become, holding Light against his chest. “Cruel. He threw almost everyone away.”

“That’s familiar,” Light said. “Reminds me of another teenager who did some very stupid, cruel things.”

His young ghost wavered, his transparent surface disturbed by the pebble of Light’s voice. L couldn’t help but study the lineless face, how none of his age could be reflected on a visage so like his own. Even the clothes, black shirt and dirty jeans, were a telephone-game version of his youth. All that rang completely true was the diamond of curiosity buried deep within dark pupils. L snaked his arms tighter around Light and spoke into his hair.

“I thought I was going to die alone,” L whispered. “I thought I could never love anyone, and that no one should love me.”

“You were wrong about that.” Light shrugged, brushing off the sorrow L poured into his voice. “It’s not the first time you were wrong. It won’t be the last.”

He thumbed to the next page, which was marked by a red sticky note. A blush burned on L’s cheeks – he remembered what a red note meant. Across Light’s lap, the sketchbook laid open two sheets covered by nude sketches. The body was familiar in each – a girl with short hair, small breasts, heart-shaped bottom, and a far-off stare – and a few of the poses were angled to imply one particular activity. Light’s cheeks bloomed rose red.

“Oh.” His voice popped. “Oh.”

“She was someone I used to know.” L buried a kiss on Light’s temple. “Back when I thought it was very romantic to ask people to strip so you could draw them.”

“Do you remember her name?”

“No.” He didn’t have to think twice. “We did have sex. On that bed too.” L pointed at the iron-framed twin bed, its flannel sheets made crisp and recalling nothing of his sexual past on it. “Always a surprisingly comfortable place for sex, if I recall right.”

Light snapped the book shut. His hands shook but that tremble wasn’t nervous. L kissed his ear, nipping the soft lobe as Light fell back against him fully, whispering his name like dust off a bookcase.

“L,” Light breathed. “L, L, L.”

“Do you think we have enough time before dinner?” L crawled his hands from Light’s waist to his shorts’ top button.

“Yeah.” Light’s eyes fluttered. “We’ve got maybe twenty minutes. I want to suck your cock, babe. Do you want that?” His dewy gaze tilted so Light looked straight in L’s eyes. “Do you want your favorite cocksucker to do his job for you?”

“Yes.” L squeezed his eyes closed. “Yes. Of course.”

They tumbled onto the twin bed, which creaked under the shared weight. Light kissed with his hands fisted in L’s shirt, his lips fitted and warm over his mouth. L nipped Light’s lower lip, asking for more, and received a teasing lick. Fingers danced to his jeans and undid the fastenings. Light’s eyes were closed while he worked, moans puffing soft from him as L cupped his thighs from behind, rocking him forward so his crotch rubbed on L’s.

“Stop-p,” Light said, lip between his teeth. “You’re going to get me too worked up.”

“I want you worked up.” L pressed a kiss to Light’s jaw. “I love it when you’re worked up.”

“Maybe if we had an hour, not twenty minutes.” Light drew down L’s zipper, reached around and grabbed his hands. He pushed them flat to L’s chest, pinning him by the wrists. “Hands up here. No touching me.”

“Yes, sir.” L wiggled his fingers as Light slipped down between his legs. His brown hair shone under the low lamp light and his clever fingers released L’s cock from his boxer briefs. Surrounded by curling iron frame bars and red and blue plaid flannel, Light appeared as a vision of the past and future. Nostalgia poured over L; yes, he would have liked to have known Light as another teenager – both of them fumbling toward adulthood together. Maybe they could have been each other’s first dates, first kisses, first sexual experience. Maybe they could have molded each other into different people and spun off in different directions to make different choices. His heart yanked. No, L didn’t want that story. He liked the one he was in now: where Light lowered his pink mouth over his cock, looking through his lashes at L with attentive lust.

 _I’m going to marry him,_ L thought, _and have him for as long as we live._

His thoughts ripped apart as Light began to bob his head, hand wrapped around the root of L’s cock and pumping in time. Shuddering moans puffed out around his sucking; drool touched his lip corners. L squeezed his hands into fists. Fuck, he wanted to touch Light. The heat of his mouth – that kind of slick fire licking his sensitive skin from all sides – was perfect and maddening. If he shut his eyes, L felt the pliant stretch of Light’s lips as they caressed his shaft, puckered for intermittent kisses on his aching tip. He tipped his right hand downward, just brushing a lock of brown hair, and Light tapped his leg.

“No toushing,” he said, words muffled by L’s cockhead still resting on his tongue. “I ‘old you no toushing.”

“Right, right.” L canted his hips, bouncing his cock further into Light’s mouth. “But I want to. I want to touch you so bad, princess.”

Light gave L’s tip a short suckle before pulling off it completely.

“You’re going to touch me all you want after the wedding,” he teased. “Why don’t you paint me a picture with your words, since you’re so good at art? Paint me a picture of how you’ll touch me once we’re married.”

He ducked his mouth back onto L’s dick, licking its underside with short, tender strokes before sucking it in. His cheeks hollowed and through his lashes, Light gave L an expectant look. Mouth dry, L smacked his lips and pulled his aroused brain onto quickly laid train tracks.

“Paint you a picture.” L exhaled. “Okay. After the wedding, do you know what I’m going to do?”

Light cupped his balls and L rocked his hips up, groaning between heaving breaths. A smugness that shouldn’t have belonged to someone with a throat full of cock sparkled in Light’s features. L narrowed his eyes.

“When I get you out of your wedding clothes, I’m going to fuck you until you pass out.” His voice rattled with a growl. L hadn’t meant for the deep vibration, but at the faint whimper Light let out, his stomach dropped along with his tone. “I’m going to put my hands all over your body, worship it with my mouth until there’s not a single part I haven’t painted myself on. I’m going to make you feel pleasure until your body is on fire with it. Until all you can think about is me touching you and how bad you want me to fill up the hunger you’ve been carrying for someone to fuck you this perfectly, this completely.”

Tears collected over the rim of Light’s eyes and fell in a slow spill over his ruddy cheeks. Orgasm stirred in L’s belly, and when Light dropped his lips to the root of his cock and swallowed, there was no dam in place to stop the flood. He came hard with a clear shout – a mixture of current sensation and future fantasy urging him forward. Tension unlocked in his limbs that L hadn’t realized was there and he relaxed into the bedspread. A quiet gagging noise brought his head up; Light had swallowed a good deal of come but not all of it. White dribbled down his chin as Light opened his mouth, come dropping on his shirt front.

“Trash,” Light waved an insistent hand at L. “Trash can.”

L rummaged at the bedside for a familiar can, glad to find it where he’d left it ages ago. He pressed it into Light’s hands and watched him spit a glob of come into it. Without thinking, L sat up and used the back of his hand to clean some leftover mess from Light’s lips. He wiped his hand on the sheets with his limp cock laid against his jeans. Even tucking it back into his underwear sent twitches of soreness through his legs, soothed by Light curling between them and resting his head on L’s hip.

“Shirt’s ruined,” Light said, checking out the come stains down the center of his tank top.

In answer, L sighed. He ran his clean hand through Light’s hair, taking care to rub at the base of his neck. Fingers coaxed a purr out of Light and he turned his cheek against the jut of L’s hipbone. His eyes cast around the room.

“Do you think we would have been friends?” He squeezed his arms around L and wriggled closer to his chest. “If we’d met, you know, as teenagers?”

“Yes.” L said. “Terrible friends. We wouldn’t have been good for each other. Quillsh would have called someone to ‘take care’ of you so I would stop focusing on our terrible, evil friendship instead of work.”

Muffled laughter tickled L where Light puffed it out. He’d maneuvered himself under L’s chin, legs tangled with a warm thigh pressed firm against a recovering, clothed cock. _Not enough time,_ L thought, and he patted Light on the ass.

“I don’t think we’d be friends,” Light said. “I don’t think I could just be friends with you.”

“Good news.” L pinched Light’s ass. “We are much more than friends.”

“Yeah.” For a moment, bliss painted a smile on Light’s face and it was beautiful. Shade by shade, the bliss faded and he pushed himself onto his elbows.

“We’ll be late for dinner,” Light said. “Let me borrow one of your sweaters. I don’t want anyone asking about the shirt stain.”

After riffling through the ancient burial ground of teen L’s dresser, Light paraded into the hall in an old Nine Inch Nails sweatshirt, holding L’s hand. Behind him, L dawdled with his pants changed to clean, if baggy, sweatpants. They made it in time for dessert – rum cake and coffee – and stayed behind after everyone left, L sitting with Light while he ate a warmed plate of dinner and L took in another piece of cake.

“Are you worried about tomorrow?” Light asked, his voice low and partly muffled by green beans. “Did you write your vows?” His foot tapped on the tile in a rapid, unintelligible Morse code. “I wrote mine a week ago, but I’m not sure, you know. How can I say what I want to say in front of my family?”

“Is there something you can’t say in front of your family?”

Light shot a withering look at L and scoffed. He crammed more green beans in his mouth and gestured with his clean fork.

“Just that I’m an unconvicted murderer, and you’re marrying me in spite of that. And that for the past three years I’ve killed one person a month because I can’t,” his words clogged with food and a touch of sorrow. “I can’t lose my memories of what I did. I want to put all that in my vows, and I can’t, because my family doesn’t know what I did and they don’t know that you do.”

“Hm.”

“Also I think I put something in the vows about your penis.” Light pushed the last green bean around on his plate. “My dad will hate that I did that.”

L picked a candied walnut off his cake and tugged Light’s sleeve. When he turned, L caught Light by the chin and opened his mouth to pop the walnut in. It sat on his tongue, lingering like a crown.

“Shut up.” Slowly, L closed Light’s lips and kissed him. “Your vows will be perfect, just like my penis.”

Light scoffed. “I didn’t say it was perfect,” he said. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” He toyed with a small tower of mashed potatoes, his fork stroking back and forth. Each stroke flexed the little tendons in his wrist. Those hungry, erotic movements L swallowed with his eyes – he imagined all the complex machinery inside Light that facilitated his entire being. The small. The big. The mundane.

“Have you ever wondered what you look like inside?” L asked, perching his chin on his palm and leaning onto the dining table. “All your muscles and bones and nerves laid out.”

“I wonder what you look like.” Light’s eyes – bright, blinding, a fox eyeing a chicken – tucked themselves over to side-eye L. “When we first met, I had a dream that I dissected you.”

“Did you?” A shiver, so pleasant he was sorry to feel it leave, rustled L. “Was it a good dream?”

Pink tongue licking his pink lips, Light stalled in his answer. He flicked his fork through the mashed potatoes and grasped L’s chin. His force was gentle and firm, thumb dipping to touch the bottom row of small teeth as he pulled L’s mouth open. L licked the tip of the thumb.

“I took a scalpel and slid it down your arms.” Lust simmered in Light’s voice, a nostalgic and wet sound. He slid the forkful of potatoes into L’s mouth and pushed it close. Light’s palms were always a dry sort of clean, the kind a person gets from washing their hands too much. L smelled a hint of aloe – Light’s favorite hand cream – as one big, flat palm sealed over his mouth.

“Chew,” Light said. “And swallow.”

Potatoes squished and slopped around L’s mouth until he swallowed and winced. Their starchy aftertaste, made thicker by the butter in the mash, tortured his sweet tooth. But he did as Light told him, those fox eyes glittering in a breathless eagerness that L chased after. That interest, that studious arousal simmering through Light, made L’s mouth water.

Light peeled his hand away in a slow gesture and L caught it, giving his wrist a tender kiss.

“What’s next in the dream?”

“I peel open the skin,” Light sighed. “I take note of your veins, and your bones. All that pink and red muscle squirting blood on my shirt. Whenever I touch your open wounds, you shiver but don’t scream. It was like you wanted me to open you up and see your humanity.” He looked at his hands, then to L with tears threatening to fall. “All I’ve ever wanted was to be that close to you in reality – like I could touch the bones that hold you up.”

“You have such horrible things in your head.” L wrapped his arm around Light and pulled him close. Light buried his nose in L’s neck, fingers clawing into his shirt. A soft animal inside L purred when he sniffed and smelled himself on Light – the old sweatshirt, the leftover of his come drying underneath. At last, he couldn’t stop himself; L kissed Light’s forehead. “Thank you for telling me.”

“When I pictured being married,” Light said, “I always envisioned that parts of myself would have to be locked up, put away when my wife was looking. The bad parts. The horrible things in my head.” His relaxed breathing was measured – controlled but not an act. L knew the difference for Light. “And look at me now. I’m marrying someone who knows every evil act I’ve done.”

“Because you told me.”

“Because I told you.”

The dining room was silent as they kissed. After a moment, Light pulled away with his mouth red, spit-slick, and not quite frowning, not quite smiling. His expression wasn’t fixed anywhere on the emotional map – lost among all the sensations of the world.

“Why are you marrying me?” Light asked. L’s mouth dried and his tongue fattened up to block all potential answers. Instead, L moved to kiss Light again, but landed on his cheek. A laugh rewarded him for his clumsiness; the question was successfully averted.

Light left his dirty dishes with the kitchen staff and told L to grab their luggage while he found a room. L trundled off to his old room, collecting their suitcases in as smart a way as he could. The result was a stack wobbling in his arms. It blocked his view as he wandered trying to find Light, who stood at a distance from a large painting. L dropped the luggage to the floor. Their commotion broke the trancelike stare Light had on the painting and when he looked to L, he blushed.

“It’s one of yours, isn’t it?” He pointed to a corner with a small charcoal L etched into the paint’s grooves. “Remarkable. I don’t know why, but I love this painting. Have you ever felt like that?”

“Not all of us are so devoid of artistic passion.” L perched his elbow on Light’s shoulder and leaned his weight there. As he studied the painting, he sucked his teeth and squinted. Oh, yes. His “red” phase. A tall canvas smeared with light, dark, and mid-shades of red – so similar and yet each one its brother’s shadow or sunlight – with two pale hands clawed at the bottom. The hands were clean except for – L leaned in to make sure he remembered the detail right – tiny crescents of red beneath the fingernails.

“I’m not _devoid_ of artistic passion,” Light said. “I like plenty of art. You’re making a big deal, _again_ , of when I said I didn’t like music.”

“That is just something that stays in the brain.” L tapped his own forehead.

“What does this painting mean?” Gone was the annoyance, and now Light’s voice was breathless. He was transfixed. Bending at the waist, Light leaned to where L was and squinted as well. “Oh. They have nails.”

“It’s the little details.” L paused and, absent-mindedly, tucked a strand of Light’s hair behind his ear. “What do you think the painting means?”

He waited to hear Light complain that L, being the artist, ought to just tell him. Instead, he heard a shuddering breath and Light brushed his fingers over the painted hands.

“Control,” he said. “The hands are lost in all this red but you can see under the nails that they tried to rein it in. They tried to stop all that red, but they’ve got nothing to show for it. All the red kept growing.” Light rocked on his heels, hands turned to fists. “Everything will always keep growing, won’t it?”

“Some things.” L covered his hands over the fists; their sharp knuckles dug into his palms. “Other things fade. But you’re sounding sentimental. I think we ought to go to sleep.”

“Yes.” Rough emotion coarsened Light’s voice. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking about it again. Kira, you know.”

“I suppose that is your curse.” Hands still together, L pulled them both up. For a moment too long, he kept Light close and their fingers sweated; he always kept Light close for too long.

Getting ready for bed as a slow and quiet affair, not much different than at home. All the same rituals except Light was a studious tooth-brusher and he liked to be alone during his dental process. Having done his business first, L sat on top of the bed covers and fiddled with his tablet. On the wall he saw the shadow puppet of Light – dark limbs cut out of the door’s orange-white light. He watched him floss, bend to spit, and perform the strange dance of putting on his mouth guard.

L never grew out of watching Light, and the realization struck him as funny. Searching out his partner’s body – on cameras, across tables, in a shadow on the guest room wall – was an instinct. Light peered round the bathroom door and smiled. Plastic covered his upper teeth.

“Does this make you horny?” Light asked. He asked that every night, right after the mouth guard went in.

“No.” L said. “Do you mind if I leave the lamp on for another hour? I have some work I’d like to do.”

“Sure.” Flipping the covers up on the right side, Light crawled into bed and kissed L’s cheek. “As long as you admit it will be on for another two hours, really.”

“Oh, what are you? Some kind of detective?” L watched Light set his phone on the nightstand and put on his eye mask. “I object to being profiled like this.”

Light reached down and patted until he found L’s leg; with his mask on, his expression was unreadably cute. “Don’t worry.” His voice pulled into a yawn. “I’m not the one you have to worry about. My partner is an _expert_ in liars.”

At midnight, L opened his eyes to a dark room. Darting around the space, he tried to sit up but his shoulders pinned themselves to the mattress. When he slid his gaze rightward, the covers were mussed but empty.

 _Night terror,_ he noted and stared at the far wall. From behind the wardrobe, a long skeletal arm reached out and after it followed the Shinigami. Their bleached bones were segmented by violet tendons, thick purple dreadlocks cut into a loose bob. With a face stretched long and backward, L thought of old Hollywood actresses using tape to pull their skin free of wrinkles. The Shinigami lumbered to the bedside and with a dancer’s grace, crouched on L’s chest. Heaviness sunk them both down.

“Hello L Lawliet,” the Shinigami said. “You are supposed to be dead.”

“You’re in my dream,” L said. “We’re both places we’re not supposed to be.”

“He cannot hear you in this place. I don’t want him to hear.” The Shinigami’s yellow eyes rolled around the room, landing on the empty space beside L. “Light and I had a deal, and he broke it to make a deal with you. I was supposed to write down your name in the Death Note, to protect Misa Amane. But then the plan changed and I didn’t have to save Misa anymore. Do you remember her?”

“No,” L lied.

“Light Yagami is a very deceitful human. He had Misa discard her notebook. She forgot about me.”

“Unfortunate.” L groaned; the Shinigami’s feet clawed into his chest. “Why are you here? Are you going to kill me?” He hissed at the violent sting sinking further in his skin. “If you’re going to kill me, do it now. I’m getting married tomorrow, and I don’t want to die in a church.”

“Why not?”

“Oh. Old superstition from when I was younger.” Secretiveness dissipated the longer L looked at the Shinigami. Something about a creature who had nothing to gain or lose made him chattier than usual. “I worried that if I died in a church, I might be judged by church rules, and I’m not interested in what I deserve, morally speaking, for an afterlife.”

“Let me ease your mind,” the Shinigami said. “There is nothing after death. Even for people in churches. You will die and everything will end. Is that a comfort?”

L took a breath and thought. “Yes,” he said. “That does offer a little comfort. Thank you, Shinigami.”

“Ha.” Sharp teeth hissed out a jagged, rock candy laugh. “My name is Rem, L Lawliet. I suppose he didn’t tell you my name, after he changed his ways.”

Raising his eyebrow, L shifted. He widened his eyes, parting his lips the way he liked to do in interrogations. People liked to see a little mouth – a faint vulnerability. When they thought there was a soft part on his armor, people loosened up and, in turn, made mistakes. Let themselves slip and give him the information he needed. Did Shinigami like it too?

“You made a bad deal with Light,” L said. “A lot of people have made that mistake. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Why are you marrying him?” Rem’s yellow eyes sliced down on L. “Aren’t you afraid it will be just another ‘bad deal’ that leaves you forgotten like me?”

“No.” L said. “I’m unforgettable, especially for him.”

Long bone fingers wrapped around his neck and squeezed. Dizziness filtered through a compressed windpipe until L’s legs kicked without his input, his heavy arms twitching to grasp, to shove, until he could breathe again. “You are a fool to trust him, and you are the world’s biggest fool to let him in your bed when you have seen his teeth. What is it you humans say? Fool me once, shame on you? Fool me twice …”

L shot up with sweat beading his face and neck. He grasped at a now-free throat, brushing against skin unbruised. Heaving gulps made his mouth ache and his pajamas were moist at the armpits. L looked to his right – drool soaked the pillow underneath Light, who had one hand clutched in the covers. His other hand draped on top of L’s leg. The longer L stared, the more his heart settled until all that was left was vague dread. He hadn’t had a night terror in years – not since he was seventeen, to be honest.

His gaze skipped back over to the nose twitching across from him. Light’s lips parted, the plastic curve of his mouth guard behaving as a curtain to a dark red tongue inside. A soft place in the armor. L bent himself sideways and came in close, missing a kiss on the lips to dive his nose into Light’s chest to smell: spearmint ( _toothpaste_ , the detective in L dictated), sandalwood ( _body wash, from the travel bottle he poured a little into for the trip_ ) _,_ and sweat ( _from inside him, from inside the wonderful, terrible clock of Light Yagami’s body_ ). Rem had asked why L would marry _him_ , avoiding a name that L wanted listed beside his own forever. Pressed into the warm cove of Light’s body, L’s eyes shut and heard the echo in Rem’s voice of Light at the dinner table.

He shifted and curled his arms beneath Light’s, bunching his shirt between pale fingers. Soft snuffling on his head, and then Light’s little triangle nose rubbing into L’s dark hair for a sniff, infected L with tenderness. The rapid filing of smells that he’d done just a moment ago was now running through Light’s head, L was sure. Light slid his arms around L’s waist.

“I had a night terror,” L said. Light’s hand was heavy on his back. “I thought I’d go to the kitchen, maybe eat something to feel better.”

“What was it about?” Light’s voice was sloppy, lined with mouth-guard increased spit.

L frowned. He didn’t want to tell Light about Rem, but a lie wouldn’t surface on his tongue. The truth didn’t surface either. All he thought of was the lost wet look in Light’s eye as he’d stared at that painting, the bruise in his voice back in L’s old room. The hard case of his mind knew keeping his night terror secret was stupid; but the soft animal inside L didn’t want to make Light sad. He patted Light’s chest and sat up without answering. A pair of bleary eyes peered at him; Light’s eye mask jammed up his bangs and gave him a look of cozy unkemptness, even as he frowned. L didn’t stop himself from leaning in to kiss the wrinkles on Light’s forehead.

“Are you okay?” Light spoke in a frank tone. “Was it about the wedding?”

“No. Not about that.” L kissed Light on his temple and felt a hand tangle in his hair. “Go back to sleep, little brat. I’m still marrying you tomorrow, so don’t be worried.”

“I’m not worried about that, big head.” Slithering his hands back to himself, Light tugged his eye mask back down and settled on his pillow. He never did things L asked without also complaining. “If you’re going to the kitchen, bring me back something. Like, mm.” Light tapped a knuckle to his lips. “If there’s any crescent rolls, or something. Maybe a biscuit.”

“Sure.” Lowering his feet flat to the carpet, L trotted to the hooks where his robe was. He slung both arms through the sleeves and patted the pockets, finding only lint. “A biscuit. For Light.”

“Or a crescent roll.” Mumbling took hold of Light’s voice and when L glanced at the bed, he was already curling back into his sleep position. “If there’s any.”

L paced down the mansion’s second floor hallway quick enough that his robe billowed behind him. His mind sifted through his night terror, finding particles of gold therein – ideas troubling him, memories that hadn’t faded. He alighted on what Rem mentioned of his plan ruining Light’s plan. Although he’d never found out Light’s original intent, six years ago in a tower in Tokyo, he hadn’t realized how many other things had changed besides saving his own skin.

When he reached the staircase, L skidded on his heel and glanced around before hopping onto the banister. He used to slide down the railing as a kid, Quillsh at the bottom of the stairs tapping his foot. Doing it now, his hair was longer, blowing backward as he rode down, and L laughed. The laughter was big, throaty, and slammed like a drum through his breast bone. Light called it his favorite laugh.

“I like to hear you full of yourself,” Light told L. “I like to know you’ve got big emotions.”

He leapt off before he hit the bottom stair and stumbled into the foyer. Moving in wide, quick steps, L swung into the kitchen but his momentum stopped as he walked in on Quillsh, illuminated by a single overhead light.

“What are you doing here?” L asked.

“Thinking.” Quillsh pushed a bowl toward L, who shuffled closer to see it was full of Maltesers. Without thinking, he filched three chocolate balls and popped one in his mouth.

“Thinking of what?” Soft milk chocolate gummied L’s teeth as he chewed and talked. Quillsh took a chocolate himself, chewing thoughtfully. His sweet tooth had been their first agreement, a few days after he brought L home to the Wammy House. They’d housed an entire package of Turkish Delight, and Quillsh told a 6-year-old L that his favorite food was candy. It was the first time L trusted someone on instinct; no other adult had ever shared his taste in sweet food.

“Well,” Quillsh sighed. “I’m thinking about you. And about my family.”

“What? All of them?” L shoved his hands into his robe pockets, playing with the lint to avoid taking another Malteser. “I thought most of your family was dead.”

“They are. I’m the last Wammy left, after a few second cousins.” A sorrow wrinkled Quillsh’s face. His gray hair, almost silver now, was long enough to tuck into his collar. Still dressed in his stiff white oxford and black slacks, small glasses perched on the bridge of his Roman nose, Quillsh looked old to L and it frightened him.

“You know, I’ve met many good men,” Quillsh said. L recognized the tone as his war-story voice; Quillsh liked to wax on about his days fighting for Queen and Country. “Men who believe in good and want to fight for it. They’re not very complex, but that is what lets them be good men.” He took in a lumbering breath. “You and I, we’re not good men. Good people, sorry.”

L grabbed another chocolate and shoved it in his mouth. He didn’t speak but nodded.

“I always thought I’d be married,” Quillsh continued. “Eventually, since I was supposed to. But I never got around to meeting people that way. Too busy inventing, and then,” he patted a hand over L’s, “too busy with your business.” His wrinkled hand was lotion soft, buttered and organic unlike the cool sterility of Light’s aloe-scented hands. “From the moment we met, I envisioned us like two sailors on the same ship. I tried to raise you like a father, but you know me. I’m not a father.”

“I didn’t need a father,” L said. “I needed guidance, and you provided that. I, uh. I should say thank you, shouldn’t I?”

“No need.” Quillsh’s voice wavered as he reached inside his slacks’ pocket. “I didn’t like your boy, on the first few occasions we met.”

Rather than speak, L nodded and ate another Malteser. It was fair to say Quillsh had no reason to like Light, given his history. Their time together on the Kira case left stretch marks on the older man’s patience.

“And your plan, after we found the notebook,” Quillsh said, “was selfish. And risky. And I didn’t care for how unconcerned you were for our safety.”

L’s plan. Right. Chocolate rolled and coated his tongue as L remembered his “plan” that he’d put in place after they’d found that thing: the Death Note. What a stupid name, anyway.

He had examined the entire notebook with fabric gloves on, Quillsh at his side as they removed paper, performed small chemical tests and analyzed the rules listed on the inner cover. Quillsh, actually, had been the one to point out that the final two rules appeared grafted in.

“The hand-writing is off.” Quillsh’s eyes were sharp devils, made keen after years of finding forgeries of his own signature on factory patents. “It’s the same hand, but these were written days apart. If you look here,” he directed L’s attention to the first rule and the last, “there’s an aged grove in the leather with this rule’s lettering that isn’t replicated in the final one. If I had to guess, the last two are fake.”

“Guesses are dangerous.” L slid a white cotton fingertip over the lined paper. “But they’re all we have.” He remembered, at that moment in the past, having a single thought: that whatever he did next would be life or death. All he had to do was reach for one sliding door and open it, stepping into either a longer or shorter lifetime.

“Call the taskforce together, but first,” he told Quillsh, “I want you to have Light meet me in the east sitting room. Shut off the cameras, and lock the doors after you leave. I don’t want a physical record of our conversation.”

“What are you planning?” Quillsh had sounded guarded, not the first time he’d been ready to shoot down something risky.

“I’ll tell you after you call Light for the meeting.” L pulled off his gloves one finger at a time and glared down at the little open notebook. He tossed a glove over it, wishing he could spit on it instead. “But you won’t like it. That I can promise.”

Light came to the sitting room four minutes past the agreed upon time; L remembered because he ate three shortbread biscuits, and his stomach was a pit – cookies, anxiety, all thrown into the roiling pit. His plan was, actually, the stupidest he’d ever come up with. Seeing the vulpine figure Light cut as he slipped inside, hair still long enough to flip like a little duck tail over his shirt collar, gave L doubt but his resolve couldn’t slip. As Light sat on the sofa across from him, L took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Light,” he said. “I have a deal I want to discuss with you.”

“I’m still amazed,” Quillsh said, six years in the future from L’s trigger, “that he agreed.”

He took three Maltesers out and rolled them in his palm – their tempered shine under the single lamp reminded L of those chocolate gems in ugly, mall-discount rings. Quillsh took one and used his front teeth to peel the chocolate off, then popped the malt center in his mouth. While he continued his little ritual, L’s appetite for chocolate subsided.

“I used to be amazed by that too.” L pressed his arms to his sides, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Now, not so much. It’s easy enough, with perspective, to know why he said yes.”

Six years ago, in a different country, in a building he built for Light, for Kira, L put his cards on the table while Light had lukewarm coffee across from him. Maybe it would have been hot coffee, if he’d gotten there four minutes earlier.

“I know you’re planning to kill me,” L said. “And I know, with evidence, that you have forged the final two rules of the Death Note.”

To his credit, Light’s eyes didn’t widen; his limbs didn’t stiffen; and he set his coffee down, polite and in one motion. “You don’t know anything,” he said.

“I know what I know,” L continued. He searched for a soft spot, somewhere Light’s armor didn’t quite cover. “I have a deal, however, that I want to make with Kira. No one else gets this deal. Just Kira.”

“Then you shouldn’t tell me.” A shrug and Light settled into the couch. His face was painted smug, eyes daring L to keep digging – the hole wasn’t six feet deep yet. “I’m not Kira, and you don’t have a shred of proof to say otherwise.”

In all his haughty talk, Light hadn’t moved from his seat. L paused and examined. Long legs crossed, but arms left unfolded, Light stayed still and open, even as he claimed nothing L said was worth a damn. _But you still want to hear what I say_ , L realized. _Because you’re not sure what you want to do next._

“I am willing to stop pursuing the Kira case.” L twined his fingers together. “You get three years.”

“Three years?” Eyebrows raised and lowered to narrowed eyes. “What are you playing at, Ryuzaki?”

“It’s been a while since you’ve seen your family,” L said. “I bet you miss having a normal dinner with them. I bet you miss being normal.”

Light glanced down and his shoulders shifted forward: there it was, the soft spot.

“I’ll give you three years of no observation. If I’m asked to consult on the Kira case, I’ll decline. I won’t watch you. You can keep on your activities, even keep Miss Misa under your employ. She’ll be happy to have more time with you anyway.”

Frigid limbs struck Light at all angles, and L fought off a sense of victory. All he had was reactions when he needed a firm answer.

“You’re being a real jerk, you know.” Light spoke in a harsh shout, an echo of an echo of Soichiro with none of the authority. “How can you accuse me and my girlfriend of such heinous crimes? We’re innocent.”

“Stop.” L waved his hand. “Three years, and you can do as you please as Kira. And then, in three years,” he untucked a red cell phone from his pocket, “use this phone. There is only one contact number. We’ll meet again and if you haven’t changed your mind about the whole business, you can carry out your original plan.”

“What?” Now Light leaned completely forward, his elbows almost on the table. “Change my mind? Do you think I’m some kind of flip-flop?” He scoffed. “You’re pathetic, you know? You’re just trying to buy yourself time to beat me, and I won’t fall for it.”

“Take the deal or do not, Light,” L said. “I don’t need the commentary.”

The pit in L’s stomach filled rapidly – _death, humiliation, no more cookies_. Light fidgeted, his fingers twiddling the cell phone L handed him. His breath was even but it stunk of too much control. Every second he sat there, playing with the phone, not answering the question, maturity flaked away until Light looked seventeen and confused. L inhaled; he could deal with seventeen and confused.

“Light,” he said. “Your father misses you. Three years is a lot of time to spend with him without needing to look over your shoulder. Take the phone, and take the deal.”

Long tapered fingers wrapped around the red phone, and Light didn’t look away from his lap. “Okay,” he breathed. “I’ll take your deal, Ryuzaki. Three years.”

“Why do you think he said yes?” Quillsh, six years past and chewing malted milk, patted L’s shoulder. “Fear?”

“Yes.” L glanced around the kitchen for the glass pastry case, his eyes lighting up when he saw it filled with a single crescent roll. “At first. But also,” he slid under Quillsh’s grasp and made a beeline for the roll, “I like to think that he simply didn’t want to kill me.”

“I doubt it.” The old rumble in Quillsh’s voice startled a laugh from L. “But. Well. I suppose he did call you, didn’t he?”

Indeed, three years passed and on a Tuesday evening, the one cell phone L never used lit up with a Tokyo-area number.

“He did call me.” Faint but genuine teeth showed when L smiled. “I’m still alive.”

“Yes. You are.” Quillsh closed his eyes and sighed. “You know, L, I think you’ve changed a lot since then. I don’t see the same person here that I saw running that case.”

“Am I a better person now?” L couldn’t run the scoff from his voice. “Has love made a shiny happy version of me?”

“No. You’re just different,” Quillsh said. “Change is a neutral state. It’s always happening, without moral imperative, or meaning. We experience things, and we’re changed people. I went to war in one shape and came back in a different shape – not good or bad, just different. You let a murderer go free and he came back to you, loved you, and you both changed each other. Not for better or for worse. Just … changed.”

“Ah.” When he strained his spine, bunched up as he’d wrapped the crescent roll in wax paper, L heard a cacophony of pops and snaps. “That sounds right. Good night, Quillsh. I need to take this roll to Light.”

“Yes. Good night, L.” Adjusting his glasses, Quillsh stared down at his worn hands with their small smears of chocolate and tiny white scar tissue. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be staying here a little longer tonight. Just to think.”

L left him in the kitchen, and swept toward the stairs. He thought about eating a piece of Light’s roll but didn’t. It should be whole when he presented it – ready to be eaten in slow, picked off bites the way Light liked to do.

…

The mansion’s chapel on property was a four-minute drive on a thin road pointed like a witch’s finger to the white building. A long steeple cut into the blue sky and L craned his neck to stare as he pulled into one of five parking spots. Beside him, Soichiro grumbled and L shot his head back against the headrest. In the backseat, both Sachiko and Sayu patted the foam curlers tucked into their dark hair.

“Oh, uh,” L said. “We’re here.”

“Okay, okay.” Sachiko popped out first and beckoned an eager Sayu after her. She was faint as they left the car but talked at a solid volume L couldn’t miss. “You go find your brother and Watari. I’ll get the garment bags and makeup out.”

L shut off the engine, reaching for his door handle when Soichiro coughed. It was a fake cough, unrealistic in an embarrassing way for the former chief of police. Slinking his hand back into his lap, L waited for the loud slam of the back hatch shutting and Sayu calling her mother over to the chapel. A cloud passed over his thoughts before breaking, easily, into fragments. He had no reason to be scared of Light’s father – if anything Soichiro should be afraid of L.

His breath caught and he whipped his face to stare at Soichiro. Oh, shit. That was what this conversation was going to be.

“You’re afraid of me,” L repeated from his thoughts. Soichiro winced and waved his hand to clear the insinuation away. He wasn’t fully dressed in his formal attire – only the white oxford and navy blue dress pants, with his suit jacket folded along his lap. Still, his collar looked like it pinched his throat. It was one of the few physical features mirrored from Soichiro to his son: a strong throat and jawline. But the father’s shoulders were broader, his body a physical, unmoving brick where the son was a blood-filled fox whose body shifted with his own needs. L wondered if Light would grow a mustache someday.

“I want to talk about Light,” Soichiro said. “You’re marrying my son, and I’ve barely known about the two of you as together. Please understand, as someone who doesn’t have children. When your son calls you with a month’s notice that he’s marrying the man who is supposed to be his boss, you have questions. Concerns. Worries.”

“Fears.” L finished for him, keeping his tongue on the _man_ comment. He didn’t really care to discuss his gender complexities in the car. “I promise that Light is in good hands. You should go help your wife, or something.”

He pulled the door handle and stepped one foot out of the car; Soichiro caught his wrist and squeezed.

“My son was gone for three years.” Steel threaded in the rhythm of Soichiro’s voice, whipping around L’s attention to hold it still. “He spent three years after that investigation where you tortured him, made me almost shoot him, and accused him of murder, he spent those years afterward getting back to normal. Going to university and joining clubs. Dating that Misa girl, breaking up with her. Everything was fine and then, he sat us all down to say he was leaving Japan to start some internship with a small international taskforce. My wife and Sayu asked questions, and he gave them good answers. I’ll give you that – he had perfect answers. But I knew.” White light covered the older man’s glasses and obscured his eyes. “I knew you had him again.”

L recalled the actual day Light called him – he hadn’t entirely kept his promise not to watch Light during the three year grace period. The urge to observe was minimal: newspaper articles about the continued Kira deaths, the lowering crime rates, and the occasional second or so of security camera footage of Light in a convenience store. His favorite snack was barbecue chips, L noted. That was how the first year passed, with L peering out of the corner of his eye at Light’s little Kira parade and then returning to his actual work.

The second year, he found the parade dampened quite a bit. Kira deaths, although not in a number noticeable to someone who hadn’t dedicated months to that collected data, had fallen and then the death number fell enough that the news stopped reporting on the phenomenon. Throughout the first year, L received repeated calls from law enforcement asking for assistance with Kira and then, around October of the second year, the calls stopped. In January of the third year, L found only one recorded death for the entire month that matched Kira’s methodology. When the pattern continued in Feburary – one death, no other activity – L caved and had a small-time private investigator report on Light.

“Seems normal,” the PI told L. “He goes home after his university clubs. Has a few friends, but no partners. Mostly keeps to himself. I couldn’t find any strange business.”

“What clubs? Any in the criminal justice vein?”

“Mm, nah. He’s in the LGBT group on his campus, though. He’s the treasurer.”

L closed out the case and paid the PI a tip for his discretion. Then, he waited for his cell phone to ring and when it did, he answered within an instant.”

“Hello, Ryuzaki?” Light’s voice was different. Where a hinge of politeness had kept it high-pitched when L knew him, now Light spoke in a deeper, looping sort of tone. He sounded like calligraphy. “I want to meet with you. It’s the end of the three years, you know.”

“I’m well aware.” L squeezed his thumb and forefinger together, rubbing them in circles until his blood stopped rushing around. “Have you changed your mind, Light? About things?”

“Just,” a sigh and then the rapid tapping of annoyed fingers. “Let’s just meet, okay? And if you hire another person to tail me, I can recommend someone more professional. The last guy creeped out half of my club members.”

They arranged to meet at a large chain hotel, and Light signed off on the phone with a soft “Thanks.” L sat with the silent phone on his ear for five minutes; his processors churning the information in his head that he might not be waiting for death after all. That his plan might have worked. He typed in Quillsh’s private number and requested he work up documents of employment.

“I have another plan,” he told Quillsh. “And you won’t like this one either.”

“I suggest you speak to your son about your concerns,” L said, three years older than he was when he decided to hire Light, and two years older than when he fell in love with him. He flexed his arm from Soichiro, who let it go without trouble. “But you should know, Mr. Yagami, that Light keeps his secrets very well. He did that even before I _had_ him, as you put it. Consider that he might not have found everything as fine as you did.”

L left the car, waited for Soichiro’s dignified, if contrite, exit and locked the doors. At one of the other parking spots, Quillsh leaned on his car’s bumper with a black garment bag. His four-piece suit – a rich brown with maroon living peeking from the lapels – cut him into a finer figure than the man L found eating Maltesers at midnight. Unclouded grey eyes followed the quick path of Soichiro to the chapel’s back entrance as Quillsh handed off the garment bag to L.

“Are you instigating something before a wedding?” Quillsh raised his eyebrow; both white bushy brows had been combed, it seemed. The result was handsome, the way L remembered Quillsh looking when he was young enough to drag his little ward to gala events. “You’ll never have time to clean that up after the ceremony.”

“I’m not instigating.” L slung the garment bag over his shoulder. “And I’m not cleaning. I only suggested he talk to his son. That’s not the worst suggestion I’ve made to Soichiro Yagami, not even the worst I’ve made about him and his son.”

“I wouldn’t say measuring yourself against a twenty-five year old Ryuzaki is the best judgement tool,” Quillsh said. “Will you need me to help get dressed? If my memory is right, you’re not very good with ties.”

“Your memory is spot on. Lead the way to the dressing room, Watari.”

Since Quillsh owned the property, the congregation had left the chapel offices open to their little wedding party. L followed Quillsh into a small corner room and stripped off his jeans, shirt, and socks. As he dressed himself into his white groom’s tuxedo, L wiggled his toes in the low mud-brown carpet.

“I don’t like churches,” he said. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“Yes. I remember you once expressing interest in being a part of the choir though.” Quillsh folded his suit jacket over a desk chair and fiddled with several folders embossed with gold crosses. In his vest pocket was a lump that L kept an eye on as he buttoned his own vest up. “Your interest waned when I told you most church choirs require group rehearsals.”

“Yes, that’s right. I liked the outfits.” L pulled his white tuxedo jacket on and shifted his shoulders, arms, until it blanketed his torso like the first snow of winter. The fit – tailored in a shop where Light had sat beside the tailor and read crossword questions out loud so L wouldn’t get bored standing still – was cozy. “Big white dress sort of thing and gold trimming. I liked the singing too.”

“You’re not a very good singer.” Now Quillsh began opening the folders. “My, these priests order a lot of cheap wine.”

“How was he, in the car with you?” Pressing his hands down his front, L inhaled and twisted around so he looked Quillsh in the eye. “Light seemed nervous last night. I don’t want him to be nervous.”

“No, he’s not nervous.” Quillsh took up the blue bow tie, gesturing that L come closer, and looped the fabric around his stiff-necked collar. “He practiced his vows, and they’re very good.”

“Oh. Good.” An anxious balloon deflated inside L; Light had been so worried about his vows. “He said he mentioned my penis in his vows.”

“He must have edited that from the version he read to me,” Quillsh said. “There. You’re tied up.”

No mirror hung in the church office, so L stepped back from Quillsh and looked down. From toe to torso, the long white line of himself was as neat as he’d ever been. L glanced at Quillsh, who had two fingers tucked in his vest pocket. From it, he drew a small black box that he set on the desk and tapped once.

“This is my father’s ring,” Quillsh said. “He gave it to me when he passed, a year before I took you in. I think you should have it.”

“Sure.” L opened the box; the ring was polished gold, with no gems or designs. He checked in the inner surface and there, engraved in a mouse’s calligraphy, was the name _Whammy_.

“It’s not for your boy. And it’s not to replace your own ring.” Quillsh folded his hands in his lap. “But I want you to have it because you’re my family, L, and when I die, you will be the last Wammy.”

“Give or take a few second cousins,” L whispered.

“Yes. Give or take.” Sighing, the older man removed his glasses and wiped them with a small handkerchief. He didn’t put them back on before looking at L. “You should go speak with your boy, if you did send his father after him. Whatever his secrets are, they’re yours too.”

“I know.” L tucked the ring back in the box, and the box into his pants’ pocket. He clasped a hand on Quillsh’s shoulder. “You’ve changed too, you know. I like this version of you.”

“Go on.” A warm chuckle trickled from Quillsh and he pushed L out the door. “You’re not very good at stalling.”

Light and Soichiro’s voices weren’t loud per say, but it wasn’t hard to find the room they were in. L skittered to the half-open door but paused before knocking. Flavors of gritted-teeth politeness simmered hot in both voices – heat rising enough that at least one was near breaking.

“Ryuzaki and I worked together for a long time before we became a couple,” Light said. “He was impressed on the Kira case. You know that. You were there. I was hired for my skills, not some conspiracy to get me in bed.”

“I was there to see him put you in a jail cell, and when he tortured that poor Misa girl.” Soichiro’s tone was low, a paternal sort of sword cutting through it that L pictured pinning Light to the conversation. “And then, he disappeared. Just up and said you were innocent. Why didn’t he hire you then?”

“He wanted me to continue my college work.” Insistence didn’t suit Light’s voice; he sounded better making strong statements, not ones he thought needed an extra push. “And give me room to make an informed decision. I was only seventeen, Dad.”

“I don’t understand.” An extended sigh rattled Soichiro’s words. “Light. He called you a murderer. Not just a murderer, but the worst one I’ve ever seen. How do you just forget and forgive that?”

“Dad.” Light cracked down the center and his voice was small, growing from the split. “It’s not about forgiveness. We’re not about forgiveness.”

“The man asked me to shoot you,” Soichiro said. “How is that something that doesn’t need forgiveness?”

“He’s not,” Light started and clicked his tongue. L, in the midst of eavesdropping, chuckled to himself. “He’s not a man, Dad. Ryuzaki doesn’t identify that way.”

“I have been accepting, haven’t I?” Soichiro spoke in a quick, frustrated stride. “I took you to those clinics when you came out as a boy, helped you go on those hormones. Then you come out as gay, and our family accepts that even though you’d never shown any sort of, I don’t know, gay behavior before. Then, you leave Japan for the first time in your twenty year old life and live with a, uh, person who I’ve only known to hurt you. And I accept that, I did accept that.” A thump and L realized Soichiro was on the other side of the wall he was pressed to. “And for three years, you’re gone. My son is gone and I don’t know why.

“A month ago, you called and said you were marrying him,” Soichiro said. “I expected that then, maybe, you’d tell me what was going on, but it’s another secret. Another part of you that I, your mother, even Sayu, doesn’t know about. I can’t accept it anymore. I can’t accept that you’re going to be a secret from me now.”

“Dad. What do you mean?”

“Why are you marrying him, Light?” Silence echoed through the words, even as Soichiro’s voice carried through the cracked-open door. “How on Earth can you love someone who called you a killer?”

A little breath, a little smooth hand clasp, and L shut his eyes to see an imaginary Light sitting in front of Soichiro as he listened to the real one speak in the room behind him.

“He’s changed.” Light put his imaginary hands on his imaginary father’s shoulders. His imaginary brown eyes were clear, direct; they blinked slowly in a feline gesture of love. “And I changed. In a way I just can’t tell you about. But we’re different people now.”

A soft, heavy quiet blanketed the conversation until Soichiro’s voice, smaller and just on the edge of defeated, pressed his sword all the way into Light.

“Light,” he said. “Are you Kira?”

“No.” Light lied in a smooth swallow. “I’m not. But it’s complicated.” His breathing was deep, through his nose with a little whistle and then out his mouth. “Things might always be complicated.”

L reached for the door knob and pulled it open.

“Oh,” he said, looking from father to son. “Did I interrupt?”

Relief in Light’s eyes was water over the dull fire in Soichiro’s stare. There wasn’t menace in him but pain, confusion. L pressed his lips together and turned to look only at Light. He never expected either of them to be free of collateral damage.

“You’re here for your corsage, right?” Light stood fast and went for a big black bag at the office desk. “My mom left the makeup bag in here without thinking about you needing your corsage. That’s why you came, right?”

“Yeah.” L had forgotten about the corsage. “Of course. The flower.”

“I should check on the girls.” Soichiro slapped his knees and stood as well. His full height was an inch below both Light and L. When he spoke, however, his words had a taller man’s confidence. “We’ll talk later, Light.”

Soichiro left, his dark suit flashing in and then out the crack in the door. L turned to Light, whose face was composed, eyes clear, and smile pretty – all those white teeth and pink lips. His hand choked the corsage’s plastic clamshell with each finger white under pressure.

“Here it is,” Light said. “The corsage you needed.”

The bruise was there in the words; L didn’t stop in putting an arm around Light. Brown hair draped over his shoulder as Light slumped forward.

“Hey.” L cupped the base of Light’s skull. “Hey.”

“Can you call me a little brat?” Light’s bruise faded in his voice as he wrapped his arms up L’s back. “Or maybe your favorite cocksucker? Or something that’s not Light, or Kira? I’d just like to be someone you love right now, not someone who murdered people.”

“Hm. No.” L gently took the corsage from Light’s tight fingers. “How about I put your flower on, and you put mine on, and we go stand in front of several people we’re both lying to? And then I’ll call you Light Yagami-Lawliet _and_ a little brat.” He kissed Light on the nose and tried to smile. Instead, L settled on a half-smirk. “You’re always someone I love, Light, just like you’re always someone who murdered people. I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t all the parts of yourself.”

Under his bare feet, the office carpet cooled L’s hot, nervous soles. Light straightened from his shoulder and stepped back from L. His eyes darted across the white details of his tuxedo, examining each with quiet interest.

“You look hot in this,” Light said.

“Thanks.” L popped the plastic open. “Show me your lapel, Mr. Yagami-Lawliet. I want to pin something on you.”

Light opened his arms so his full body was in view. His tuxedo was pure black, almost shimmering, with a red bow tie the only color kissing his collar. Firm, straight backed posture gave him a stately appearance but when he met L’s eyes, the fox glittered back – too mischievous to be contained in formal attire. He stood still while L pinned the corsage to him, ginger fingers being careful not to prick Light’s chest.

“Okay,” Light rummaged in the makeup bag. “Your turn.”

His hands were a more deft touch. L had seen Light sew before; he did their mending when Quillsh’s joint pain flared. As he pierced the pin through L’s lapel, Light talked in low, looping calligraphy – the voice L fell in love with.

“It’s not that I need him to believe I’m innocent,” he said. “My dad, I just want him to be proud of me. And I know he is, but I want him to really, really be proud of _me_. All the things I do. All the things I am.”

“Even the Kira part?”

“No. Well.” Light brushed the red flower on L’s chest with tender fingers. “Look. I have a basement inside me. Ever since I started being Kira, I’ve had a basement full of secrets, and ugly things, but my family sees me as just a one floor house. They didn’t ever need to know there was another place, beneath the first floor with all the good grades and normal person stuff. And now my dad, well, he’s seen that there’s a door but it’s locked.”

“Light,” L said. “I have a basement too.”

“I know.” Both Light’s hands pressed to L’s cheeks and pulled him in for a chaste kiss. “But you’ve had yours for so long. I just need a minute to mourn, okay. I need to mourn the person my dad thinks he lost.”

“For what it’s worth,” L said. “I’ve always thought you were a bigger house than anyone gave you credit for.” He stepped back, holding Light’s hand so he could kiss each knuckle. “Basement, two stories, an inch more space inside than outside. Your own haunted house.”

“Sure,” Light exhaled. “Maybe when we’ve got time, you can hang some of your paintings in this ‘house’ of mine.”

“Oh, I think you’ve got your own art to put in there.” L shrugged. “But I’ll help you clean out the basement. If you ever need to.”

“That’s.” A wet sound precipitated a long, unsteady breath from Light. “That’s really thoughtful of you, L.” His hands patted his sides, a sort of nervous gesture Light never showed. “Okay. Are you ready?”

 _Are you ready to marry me? Are you ready to tell four other people how much you love me? Are you ready to tell_ me _how deep your love is?_

“Yes.” L nodded, his hand in his right pocket squeezed around the ring box Quillsh gave him – his other hand crammed in the left pocket, fingering the ring meant for Light. “Are you?”

“I’m trying to make myself impervious to crying.” Light shook his head. “Too late to make a break for it, huh?”

“No. It’s never too late.” L hadn’t noticed before, but a stream of sunlight poured through the office window and bathed Light in warm gold. Haloed by the light, his hair curtained away his eyes so only his nose, his pink mouth peeked out. It didn’t take more than a minute to cross that short distance, tangle his hands in Light and kiss him hard. Light cupped the backs of his elbows and tugged L nearer still, tilting his head so the kiss deepened. Spit, warm spit slickened their lips and L shuddered.

“Light,” he mumbled into their connected mouths. “Light, will you marry me?”

“Shut up, big head.” Closing his lips, Light kissed L once more before pulling back. Pink spots burned on his cheeks. “Yes. Of course.”

“Let’s go do it then,” L said. “I heard that one of the grooms’ wrote some really beautiful vows about the other groom’s penis. Wouldn’t want to miss that.”

L tucked his arm around Light’s elbow in a chain link loop. They inhaled at the same time, and Light didn’t speak – just rested his head on L’s shoulder. Together they pushed open the door and left for the altar.

…

Here was how L pictured their room before they entered: dust motes almost frozen in mid-air; the sheets spread out like untouched nature, clean and free of human interference; and all of their objects of personhood – a mouth guard, tablet computer, two toothbrushes – vibrating with the possibility of transformation. His arms shook a little under the weight of Light: one cupped under his back and the other cradling his knees. Two long arms wrapped around his neck and Light bent them as L reared up his leg. He kicked in the door and the room shifted – this was the room of a married couple now.

“Am I heavier than all our luggage?” Light teased as L stumbled to the bed.

“No,” L said. “Yes. Sorry. I’ve had one glass of champagne.”

“Don’t worry.” Cupping his hands in exaggerated secrecy, Light’s hissed voice smelled like fermented sugar. “I had two glasses. We’re tipsy.”

In an effort to do a gentle drop of his husband, L spilled them both onto the bed. His chest pressed flat to Light, whose hands ran into his hair in an instant and dragged L up to kiss fervently. Tongue licks and greedy hands spurred L into grasping Light by the hips, canting them so their clothed crotches rubbed off sparks of arousal.

“Oh, fuck.” Light’s lashes fluttered as L rocked into him. “I’m too close. Babe, I’m too close.”

“That’s okay.” L flashed his hands from buttons and zippers until Light’s wedding attire was splitting open. His touch was easy as he coaxed the clothes off, even though their complex matrix was a little too much for his alcohol fuzzed reasoning. “It’s okay. I know you can do it for me again.” Pressing the heel of his hand onto Light’s cock, he stroked it through the thin silk briefs. “Come for me, Light. Go ahead and come for me.”

He suspected the buildup of arousal was carried over from the blow job the other night, and the nerve bundle of the wedding ceremony. Not to mention they’d been playing footsie during dinner – which was their right as newlyweds to be disgustingly into each other at the cost of everyone else’s comfort. But still, the crash of Light’s orgasm washed over L: his pink cheeks, mouth hung open to sigh and moan, and his legs trembling beside L’s shoulders. Light relaxed under his palm and laughed, naked limbs wriggling into the bed as pulses of come stained his briefs.

“It feels so good.” Light closed his eyes, tipped back his head to make his chin a small horizon. “I’ll never get over how it feels good with you.”

L didn’t press for more meaning. They had both had it feel worse with people whose pieces didn’t fit in their grooves. He trailed his sticky hand up Light’s thigh and traced an L over the unmarked expanse.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you so much it hurts.”

“Can you tell me them?” Light looked at L and his gaze was honey, sugar in tea – something sweet. “Your real vows? Not the ones from the church. The vows just for me.”

L nodded. It had been fine to say his vows at the chapel, in front of family and, well, maybe God or maybe just thin air. But the words were never meant for anyone’s ears but Light’s, and if he was saying them now, he’d say them right.

“Light Yagami,” L said. “It is an honor to have you with me. You are the most unbelievable person in the world. I’ve never hated someone, been frustrated with someone, and been utterly disgusted with a person the way I have been with you.” He ducked his head to Light’s stomach, kissed the flexing muscles there and tucked two fingers into his briefs. They tugged down easy to reveal the quivering cunt underneath – Light’s cock a red pulse between lips wet from coming already.

“All my life, I’ve left people behind and felt nothing about the loss. They’re faces I’ll forget, eventually. That’s how I believed change worked.” L dipped his tongue between Light’s folds, hearing the shaky intake of breath as he licked the still-sensitive cunt. He blew on the aching cock, kissed it, and then trailed his mouth to the juncture between thigh and genitals. “But now I know change isn’t just moving forward. That’s not change but just accelerated stagnation.”

Light whimpered as L’s soft speech tickled his skin.

“I couldn’t leave you behind, Light. I couldn’t let go of you,” L said. “Not for being Kira, not for being annoying, not for anything you or I have done. You asked me why I wanted to marry you, and this is the reason: I cannot bear the thought of not marrying you. There is no one else, not for me and, I believe, not for you either.”

He nipped Light’s hip bone and heard a gargled noise above him. Light covered his face with both hands, fingers pressed together but unable to muffle the trickling sobs underneath. L crawled up the bed, grasped the thin wrists and parted Light’s hands to see tears glimmering back at him.

“Okay,” Light sniffed. “My turn.”

A leg hooked over L’s hip, drawing his still-dressed body flat to all the trembling grooves of Light. They fit into each other with divine perfection.

“You told me when I came to you that I couldn’t give up the Death Note,” Light said. “I had to keep my memories of what I did as Kira and carry that weight. I was so mad, I don’t know if you remember. But I was so mad.” He pressed a knuckle to his lip, huffed out something between a laugh and groan. “God, I wanted to kill you. But I couldn’t.”

“Didn’t know my name.” L kissed Light’s nose. “I understand that’s integral to the process.”

“No. Not that.” Light rolled his eyes and cupped either side of L’s face. His palms were warm, sticky, and his thumbs brushed the tufts of hair beside L’s ears. “For three years, you left me alone and I couldn’t _stand_ it. It wasn’t that I lost interest in the work. You know how easy it is to kill criminals – like breaking eggs for an omelet.”

L nodded his head in Light’s hands; if anyone knew, L knew.

“But it was so boring,” Light said. “Boring when I barely had to cover my tracks because no one ever caught my mistakes. Boring when Misa wanted to fuck and told my mom she had a wedding dress picked out. Boring with no one to play with. And the more boring being Kira was, the more I hated doing it. What’s the point, if you weren’t watching me?

“You know the rest. I stopped the killings slowly, then dwindled it down to whatever let me keep the notebook ownership and Ryuk occupied. Misa gave up her notebook, lost her memories, and I broke up with her. Three years passed, and then you came back.”

Before he continued, Light brought L down for a kiss. With a mouth open under his, L coaxed Light’s tongue to dance with him and reveled in how he memorized the ridges of Light’s teeth. He licked across them, kissing up the happy moans Light let out. Wriggling as he pulled away, Light brushed his finger around the shell of L’s ear.

“You called me,” L said, and he was soft when he said it. Tender. “I wouldn’t have come if you didn’t call me.”

“You came and told me that you wanted to hire me on as an assistant.” The finger turned into a mouth, kissing and sucking L’s earlobe before Light whispered right against the cartilage. “I didn’t even like the work, at first. You’re a really bad boss, you know.”

“You were a bad employee.” L shivered as Light licked his ear. “Murderers tend to make bad employees.”

“I wanted to give up the notebook and you wouldn’t let me. You made me keep my deal with Ryuk.” Breathless, Light dragged his hands down L’s chest with his fingers catching on buttons, pockets, the red corsage with only a few limp petals left. “Part of me thought you hated me and wanted me to suffer the knowledge that I was God, and then gave it up to follow you around taking notes. But I realized that without those memories, it wouldn’t have been me helping you. It’d be someone who wasn’t Kira. A me who wasn’t me – one-dimensional.”

His fingers twisted, untucked the button L’s pants and lingered at his stomach.

“It’s like that painting, out there, with all that red in it,” Light said. “When I look at our love at first, all I see is the one shade. I see the dark violent crimson red – like blood, you know? But our love isn’t just one single color. I’m not one color.” He sucked in a breath and his mouth was a soft animal beside L’s ear. “You see all the shades of me; you see that there is a basement and you appreciate its darkness, because you have a basement too. You know that when you kiss me, you’re not kissing Light or Kira but both. Because all those colors and floors and secrets, they’re all of me. And now they’re all yours, too, if you’ll have them.”

“They’re nice colors.” L skidding his lips over Light’s chest. “What beautiful floors. I think I’ll keep you, if you’ll have me too.”

“I don’t want anyone else,” Light said.

Like two foxes leaping over themselves, Light giddily yanked the fastenings of L’s tuxedo open. It came off and drifted onto the bedside floor as L draped his naked body onto Light’s.

“I’m going to fuck you until you pass out, princess,” he said. “That’s what I said, right?”

“That’s what you promised.” Light nodded. “Going to keep your promises to me, big head?”

“I’ll show you my real big head.” Pressed into the meat of Light’s inner thigh, L hardened further. He wound his way down from pulsing throat to Light’s nipples, kissing and leaving faint pink suck marks as he worked his fingers into a wet, pliant hole. Every gentle brush against his cock had Light shivering, squeezing around L’s fingers.

“Shit,” Light hissed. “Fuck me.” His leg swiped up and he dug his heel into L’s ass. “Fuck me now.”

“As you wish.” L pulled his fingers out and notched his tip in, pressing one firm bit at a time until his pubic hair mixed with Light’s. Both legs wrapped over his hips and kicked his behind, Light sinking his hands into the pillows and clenching. “Hey. Are you ready to have sex with your husband?”

“Are you ready to have sex with yours?” An unromantic snap in Light’s voice made L thrust further in, turning the snap into a long moan. “F-fuck. I’m not going to pass out if you move this slowly.”

Grabbing him by his ass, L lifted Light off the bed and rocked his cock in deeper before pulling back for another hard thrust. The rhythm, steady and sharp, jolted mumbled moans along with high clear cries out of Light. Rose flush bloomed over his skin as he writhed on L’s cock. When he tried to thrust back, L gripped him tighter and held him still despite the protesting whines.

“You’re divine, Light,” L breathed, bending to kiss the tremulous plane of Light’s stomach. “Every part. Every piece.”

A soft _yeah_ echoed from where Light had his face buried in a pillow. Another one floated up as L rabbited his hips faster, slowly lowering Light down so his hand could focus on teasing his straining little cock.

“Yeah,” Light gasped. “Yeah, like that. Touch me more. Mo-ore.”

“I promised I’d worship you tonight.” L skipped his hands over Light, tracing the definition of his biceps, the keyhole scars on his chest, the jut of his hipbones. Freckles speckled shoulders where Light let the sun warm them for too long during a case in California; a white line curved on his left thigh where an FBI agent stabbed him; a pink, faded scar wound around his wrist where a handcuff used to be. “But there’s too much I want to touch, too much of you to worship.”

He lowered his face into the warm, sweaty neck and groaned as Light stroked his arms around L’s back.

“I want you,” L whispered. “I love you. I want you forever, Light.”

His thrusts stuttered, the clutch of Light’s cunt growing tighter and urgent. Fingertips tangled in L’s hair as Light let out a terrifying cry. Beneath him, his little god came apart and L couldn’t hold back. His balls tightened and released, come pouring into Light as he fucked him through their shared orgasmic aftershocks.

“Oh.” Light buried his nose in L’s crown and breathed out another sigh. “Oh, L.”

“Yeah.” L didn’t move, still tucked deep inside Light with the last pulses of come trickling out. “So, how close are you to passing out from pleasure?” He lifted his head and grinned at the bright red blush over Light’s cheeks. “You seem pretty awake still.”

“Better get back to worshiping,” Light choked out.

…

The morning after, the two stumbled downstairs to find only Quillsh at the dining table. He looked up from a small egg breakfast and informed Light that his family was visiting a farm.

“If you hurry, I’m sure you’ll catch them,” Quillsh said.

“Thanks, but we don’t do farms.” Light stumbled into the kitchen, L trailing after him looking entirely too pleased about his fucking still affecting Light’s balance. After getting his coffee, L told Light he’d meet him out back.

“I’ve got to grab some things.” One hand on Light’s back, the other one filching a blueberry muffin, L kissed him quick on the cheek. “See you in a minute.”

L settled himself on the mansion’s back patio a few moments later with his robe tied loose around his waist. A half-hearted attempt to cover himself up in Light’s tapered sweatpants didn’t make the morning chill less shocking. He glared out at nature – the wide gardens filled with the grounds workers pruning flowers and trees – and set his coffee on the deck table. Next to it, he put a black leather book and a set of charcoal. He’d housed the muffin on the way to and from his childhood room.

As he sat down, Light pushed open the back door. His disheveled look was neater than L’s – a soft grey university shirt and a pair of sagging joggers that, when he turned to close the door, displayed their proper owner’s name across the ass: “Property of Eraldo Coil.” Seeing L, his smile was warm, genuine, and he put his coffee next to L’s. Their mugs faced each other – L’s a squat black thing and Light’s a lopsided blue ceramic – as the married couple scooted their chairs closer. Light glanced at the leather book.

“I’m inspired,” L said by way of answering the glance. “I haven’t drawn in a long time. It’ll probably be very ugly.”

“It won’t be.” Light slid his gaze from the book to L, brown eyes dripping with sincere judgement. “You’ll make it good, for me. Right?”

“Anything for you, little brat.”

Rolling his eyes, Light grabbed his coffee and sipped. L caught tiny grin trying to hide behind the mug’s rim. He took his book, spread it over his lap, and started to sketch across the blank space. Between his charcoal on the page and Light’s soft sips, the air was quietly cacophonous. L liked it; he didn’t need anything else right then but stillness and Light.

**Author's Note:**

> was that good? did you enjoy that experience? leave a comment and let me know! i appreciate hearing from y'all.


End file.
